Alella city council

Alella Town Hall (Ajuntament d'Alella) stands on Plaça de la Vila, the main square of Alella, a small town in the Maresme region of Barcelona province best known for its hillside vineyards and the DO Alella wine appellation. The building sits right next to the municipal market, making it a natural starting point for anyone exploring the old part of town.

What does the town hall building look like?

The current municipal building is a modern structure with a square floor plan and clean, straight lines, typical of 20th-century civic architecture with little decorative flourish. That plainness makes one much older surviving feature stand out even more, turning what might otherwise be a routine administrative building into a worthwhile stop for visitors who weren't planning to look at town halls at all.

What is the one historic detail worth looking for?

The building's standout feature is a stone arched portal, known locally as a porta dovellada, salvaged from the previous town hall that stood on this site and was built in 1591. When that older building was torn down, the portal was carefully dismantled and reassembled into the new façade, so a piece of 16th-century stonework now sits embedded in an otherwise contemporary structure.

The portal's keystone carries the municipal coat of arms of Alella, and traces of the original polychromy — the coloured paintwork that once decorated the stone — are still visible around it. Below the arms, an inscription records the town's name together with the date 1591, anchoring the piece to a specific moment in the town's history.

Why does this detail matter?

The 1591 portal is one of the few physical traces of what local government architecture in Alella looked like in the early modern period. The surviving colour on the coat of arms hints at how vivid and decorated official buildings could once be, long before later renovations stripped most such details from civic buildings across the region.

How do visitors fit the town hall into a visit to Alella?

Because it faces the central square and stands beside the municipal market, the town hall is easy to combine with a stroll through the market stalls or a coffee stop on the plaza. From there, it's a short walk into the rest of Alella, a town spread across hillsides above the Mediterranean and surrounded by the vineyards that have supplied its wine production for generations.

Frequently asked questions

Can visitors go inside Alella's town hall? The building is an active municipal office, so public access is generally limited to opening hours and public-facing areas; the portal and façade, however, can be viewed from outside at any time.

What is the oldest part of the building? The oldest surviving element is the stone arched portal transferred from the previous town hall, dated to 1591; the rest of the current structure is a modern construction.

What does the date 1591 on the portal refer to? It marks the construction of the earlier town hall building from which the portal originally came, making it the earliest confirmed date tied to municipal government at this location.

Is there anything else nearby worth seeing? Yes — the town hall sits on Alella's main square next to the municipal market, an area that functions as the town's social hub and a good base for exploring the rest of the historic centre.

What is Alella known for beyond its town hall? Alella is best known for its vineyards and the DO Alella wine appellation, with hillsides of vines forming much of the landscape around the town.